Search code examples
sql-serversql-server-2008ssms-2012

SSMS not releasing system memory


I just started at a new office as a Data Analyst. The job entails upgrading client systems from our dbase platform to our new RDBMS. The actual conversion is handled by some in-house software that is a black box to me but at the end of the conversion my system memory usage is maxed out ~15.3 of 16GB. I was told to just restart my computer but it seems like there must be a better way (hopefully that doesn't involve fixing the software since that is out of scope for me).

I found the question at the link below but running DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS doesn't seem to work. Restarting the SQL instance works but that interrupts all the databases on the instance. Is there another way to release the memory?

SQL Server clear memory

We use both ssms2008r2 and smss2012.

Thanks


Solution

  • DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS clears all the clean buffers from the buffer pool. That won't help you.

    You need to understand that SSMS isnt eating your memory, the sqlserver service is. SQL server will expand it's memory footprint as much as you will allow it. If you have 32GB and you say it can use 32GB then it will allocate as much as it can.

    Here's a great article on DBA stack exchange regarding max server memory: https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/47431/why-is-sql-server-consuming-more-server-memory